


Long Way Home

by landsail0r



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Anders Positive, Drabble, Endgame, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 11:10:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5203583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/landsail0r/pseuds/landsail0r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written in response to a song prompt. The song was "Long Way Home" by Jukebox the Ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Way Home

None of the torches in the clinic were lit, and it was so dim that Hawke tripped and nearly fell over a broken table. They hesitated for a moment before drawing a sphere of pallid magical luminescence from their hands, laughing quietly to themself at their apprehension. Even after everything had happened, they were still hesitant about doing magic in public.

Something rustled in a side room off the clinic, and Hawke picked their way through the rubble cautiously in the flickering magelight. The fighting seemed to have spread even here, though the destruction was much less extreme than in other parts of Kirkwall. When they reached the slightly-ajar door, they knocked on the frame and then waited a few seconds before pushing it open. 

A second magelight, feeble and close to sputtering out, hung in one corner of the room and weakly illuminated Anders’s angular face. He was hunched over a trunk, shakily stuffing things into a traveling bag. It might have been the light, but he looked even more drained and haggard than usual.

“I’m glad I caught you before you left–I was hoping…” Hawke began tentatively.

 

“Honestly, I was hoping I’d be gone before you got here.” Anders sighed heavily, and upon seeing Hawke’s hurt expression he frowned apologetically and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Listen. You’ve been nothing but a good friend to me, even when I figure I didn’t deserve it. The least I can do it to try and leave you with something good. I guess you know who I am–or what I am–now, but I was hoping that if I vanished now you’d remember the good things about me more than all the bad. Maybe twenty years down the road you’ll think of me with fondness. Time does wonders for a reputation.” He laughed feebly.

 

Hawke crossed the few steps between them and offered Anders their hand. “I don’t want you to have to be a memory. I want to know the lines in your face as they appear, not guess at where they’d be. Come with me. This doesn’t need to be our ending. Not today.”

Hawke wrapped their arms around his bony shoulders and held him as the tears ran down both their cheeks.


End file.
